Sigler, DavidKhalid, Muhammad Talal2024-12-092024-12-092024-12-05Khalid, M. (2024). Anxious echoes: empire, abolition, and the romantic consciousness (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.https://hdl.handle.net/1880/120164This thesis interrogates the contradictions that permeate abolitionist rhetoric in the works of Coleridge, Blake and More, resisting any straightforward reading of moral progress or political emancipation. These writers do not merely reflect on the moral imperatives of their time; they challenge the very frameworks of reason, faith, and national identity upon which abolitionist discourse often relies. Abolition, as articulated in their works, emerges not as an unproblematic good but as an ambiguous, unsettling process fraught with contradictions. Coleridge’s oscillation between radical idealism and conservative restraint reveals a fundamental anxiety about the transformative power of liberation, suggesting that emancipation might unleash chaos rather than freedom. Blake's apocalyptic imagery destabilizes conventional conceptions of power, merging the roles of oppressor and oppressed, in a surreal vision where resistance and complicity are inextricably linked. More’s fusion of evangelical fervour with rational discourse exposes the hypocrisy within British national identity, destabilizing the ideological pillars that uphold both slavery and the concept of British moral superiority. Her rhetoric, while outwardly appealing to reason and faith, uncovers fissures within these concepts, pushing the limits of what rationality and virtue mean in a society complicit in slavery. Rather than resolving into a coherent moral triumph, abolitionist rhetoric in these texts unravels into unsettling discursive space, where the very concept of liberation becomes slippery and paradoxical. Freedom, in this context, morphs into a disruptive force that both upends and sustains the structures of oppression it seeks to dismantle. The idea of emancipation spirals into something volatile—a liberation where the line between the oppressor and the liberated dissolves into a tangled mess of complicity and subversion. The familiar language of moral and rational progress fractures under the weight of its contradictions, revealing a landscape where the boundaries of nation, identity, and virtue are blurred and violently disfigured. In this way, the thesis teaches us to see Romantic-era abolitionist rhetoric not as a singular, coherent force but as a destabilizing, multi-layered process that defies resolution.enUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.RomanticismColeridgeBlakeMoreSlaveryAbolitionLiterature--Classicalmaster thesis